United Nations adopts resolution on the World Summit on the Information Society. On 21 December 2001, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution welcoming the organization of the World Summit on the Information Society. The resolution (A/RES/56/183) recognizes the leading role of ITU in organizing the Summit, which is expected to promote access by all countries to information, knowledge and communication technologies. Further, the resolution endorses the framework agreed by the ITU Council in June 2001 to hold the Summit in two phases, the first in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003 and the second in Tunis in 2005. It urges all relevant United Nations bodies and intergovernmental organizations, including international and regional institutions, as well as non-governmental organizations, the civil society and the private sector to take an active part in, and contribute effectively to, the Summit and its preparations.

It also calls on governments to participate actively in the Summit and to be represented at the highest possible level. An important experts workshop (Geneva, 5-6 December 2001) was organized in Geneva by the Federal Office for Communications (OFCOM), the Swiss telecommunications regulator. An information session for Ambassadors also took place at ITU headquarters on 24 January 2002. A series of preparatory meetings will be held during the year, with the first Preparatory Committee Meeting scheduled to take place in Geneva from 1 to 5 July 2002.

World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-02). The host country agreement for WTDC-02 was signed at ITU headquarters on 4 December 2001 by Fatih Yurdal, President and Chairman of the Board of the Telecommunication Authority of Turkey and Yoshio Utsumi, ITU Secretary-General. WTDC-02 will take place at the Lütfi Kirdar Convention and Exhibition Centre in Istanbul from 18 to 27 March 2002. The real challenge for WTDC-02 will be to show how sector reform and investment in information and communication technologies can make a genuine difference to improving the livelihoods of the world’s most deprived populations. WTDC-02 is expected to adopt a declaration, which enshrines a shared vision of the future of telecommunications worldwide, a Strategic Plan that will be part of the ITU’s overall Strategic Plan for 2003-2007 to be adopted by the Plenipotentiary Conference in Marrakesh (23 September to 18 October 2002) and an Action Plan that spells out the priorities and programmes to be implemented by the ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D) over the next four years. In mid-January 2002, a coordination meeting of all chairmen of the five Regional Preparatory Meetings held in Egypt, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Cameroon and Trinidad and Tobago (in that order) took place in Geneva to put final touches to the regional development priorities and strategies that have been drawn up to guide the discussions in Istanbul. Both the seventh meeting of the Telecommunication Development Advisory Group (TDAG) and the TDAG subgroup dealing with private sector issues also met in Geneva in mid-January to finalize their preparations for WTDC-02.

ITU allocates code for Universal Personal Telecommunications Number (UPTN). On 10 December 2001 ITU announced the allocation of the country code +878 and associated digits 10 to VISIONng Association, an international non-profit association that includes ITU-T Sector Member organizations. This UPTN will allow global number portability regardless of geography or telecommunications carrier, including those using new IP-based technologies.

In developing the UPT numbering system, ITU followed the principal objectives below:

• Portability of the UPTN, allowing customers to retain their global number if they change carriers.
• A flexible structure (a UPTN is composed of a three-digit country code for global service application, 878, and a 12-digit Global Subscriber Number [GSN] starting with 10) that allows subscribers to choose the digits they wish and embed existing E.164 numbers into the available number space.
• A format which allows for efficient routing of calls between service providers.
• An impartial system of allocation and handling of numbers, via an international registrar.

The UPT Service is available to place and receive calls on conventional telephone terminals and mobile and IP-based networks. Until now, service providers could only provide services that required a portable personal number nationally. VISIONng will allocate numbers commercially on a first-come, first-served basis.

Joint ITU/WIPO Symposium on Multilingual Domain Names. ITU and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) jointly organized a Symposium on Multilingual Domain Names (Geneva, 6-7 December 2001) in association with the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC). Representatives of diverse stakeholders discussed the technical, legal and policy issues relating to the enlargement of the domain name space to support scripts of languages other than “Roman” characters (see story on Joint ITU/WIPO Symposium). ITU and WIPO Briefing Papers, as well as all presentations made at the symposium are available at www.itu.int/mdns.

Second Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR). ITU held its second GSR (Geneva, 3-5 December 2001) on the theme of “Effective regulation”. The symposium came up with a four-point action plan calling on ITU to help regulators develop the tools needed for effective regulation. In particular, the ITU

Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) has been requested to focus on skills-training; develop benchmarks and models; bolster regional and sub-regional initiatives and broaden input to the regulators’ global online exchange system and case studies beyond the community of regulators (see story on Effective regulation).

E-Health: ITU expertise sought for Arab-African Telemedicine Network. ITU has been asked to take a leadership role in supporting a regional project to link African/Arab national telemedicine projects into the Afro-Arab Telemedicine Network following an ITU/United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and World Health Organization (WHO) workshop for the Arab States (Cairo, 18-20 December 2001). The meeting considered four aspects of health care where telemedicine could be useful: administrative, quality and efficiency of ethical health-care services, education and training and R&D. Apart from Egypt, the countries in the first phase of the ArtNet telemedicine network are expected to include Ethiopia, Jordan, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Uganda. Egypt’s national satellite system, Nile-Sat 1 and 2 is expected to play a major role in facilitating connectivity to remote areas.

Funding is expected from the private sector, regional banks and international organizations such as WHO, the European Commission, UNIDO and ITU. The Egyptian Ministries of Communications and Information Technology and of Health and Population are expected to make a joint proposal to WTDC-02 calling for the establishment of a multi-country telemedicine network to share resources and knowledge to prevent and treat common diseases in the subregion.